Any suggestions for really quiet Mac Pro hard drives?

[Hecklerdanny]

Hey everyone. Yesterday I brought home a brand new 2.66GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro. The Hitachi drive that it came with was unacceptably loud. It would crackle and pop endlessly at the slightest task, like opening Safari. I went and bought a 750GB Western Digital hard drive and installed that, and while it's certainly better, it still gives off an annoying amount of crackles and pops and "hard drive noise" at just about anything I do on the machine, let alone things that I DON'T do on the machine.

Does anyone have any solutions or recommendation for extremely quiet drives? Maybe I just got a bad Western Digital drive, because I've heard that they're supposed to be very quiet.

Thanks a lot in advance for any help/info that you can give.

 

[Tesselator]

Hmm, Hitachi huh? See, I knew Apple wasn't exclusively using the WD Blacks.

For drive specs including noise check out Tom's Hardware:

Either here: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/enterprise-hard-drive-charts/benchmarks,27.html for enterprise HDDs

Or here: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-3.5-desktop-hard-drive-charts/benchmarks,50.html for 2009 desktop HDDs.

You should be able to sort by decibel level and then compare the drives from there. Like this: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-3.5-desktop-hard-drive-charts/Sound-Level,1032.html or something.

 

[Umbongo]

The forum users over at silentpcreview.com tend to know the best choices and there are a lot of user reviews there.

 

[snakesqzns]

How about a solid state drive and drive bay adapter?

 

[Tower-Union]

Aren't your fans already louder then the HD's?

 

[GoCubsGo]

Aren't your fans already louder then the HD's?

I know mine are and my fans are very quiet!

 

[Hecklerdanny]

No, my Mac Pro is dead silent other than the hard drive ticks and pops.

 

[MrLatte23]

normal noise

You're probably hearing normal hard drive noise. Solid state is the only thing that'll totally stop it. Maybe don't let your HD's go to sleep (System PReferences > Energy Saver). Drives have to spin up and the actuators have to read the info. Not gonna get around that unless you go solid state as snakesqzns suggested.

 

[Tower-Union]

Wow, I'm jealous

Also I just flashed a 9800GT, and its fan runs at 100% 24/7. . . >.>